The need for storing electronic media in the form of documents, files, programs, video files, audio files, and other media for the purpose of backup, remote access, sharing and collaboration is increasing in demand by individuals and businesses as their use of and dependence on electronic data increases. Typically the methods used for storing information remotely employ a combination of the operating system's file system and an application to manage the flow and load balancing of files being stored. In some cases, standard extensions that manage files across operating systems are used, but are very restrictive in their ability to further manage the files once they are stored. Therefore, requiring the use of databases and special applications to compensate for the lack of capability.
One of the more common methods for managing files on a remote server is called WebDAV. WebDAV stands for “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning”. It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. While this method does provide storage of files across different OS platforms, it is limited in its ability to do things like manipulate, synchronize, version, share or collaborate these files once they are transferred and stored. WebDAV is also not distributive—meaning that data stored using WebDAV on one server has no relationship to data stored on another server. Other storage methods are provided by the file management systems as an inherent capability of the specific operating system. Some of these include FAT, NTFS, Apple Extended File System, and the Unix File System. While these methods of electronic file management may be used in a remote storage environment, they are strictly limited to storage with other computers on the same operating systems.